The Graffiti Of William S. Burroughs

You’re looking at a detail of William S. Burroughs’ Death by Lethal Injection inspray-paint.

The transgressive writer, legend and Junkie visionary’s art works just went on view at the October Gallery in London, many of which created by shooting a can of spray-paint with a shotgun. Others were done with furious smearing of acrylics and other darkness exorcized onto canvas in traditional ways.

The theme of the exhibit is curated around Burroughs’ great concern for ecological apocalypse, the maladies of human existence on Earth and the pressure to leave it. Burroughs has called himself an “explorer of psychic areas, a cosmonaut of inner space… To achieve complete freedom from past conditioning is to be in space.”

He also loved to shoot his gun at things.

“All out of time and into space,” William S Burroughs, October Gallery, Dec 6 – Feb 16

And here’s a clip of William S Burroughs shooting his gun at things with Ralph Steadman.